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this post was submitted on 10 Jul 2023
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Social media company’s don’t understand what makes a Social network great. It isn’t advertising, or social manipulation, or exorbitant subscription fees and API charges. It isn’t restriction of speech or freedom of speech, it isn’t algorithmically controlled moderation and curation.
It is the people that make a social network great.
What consumers and products? I only see numbers on a spreadsheet going up and down!
You're right. I say this every time these conversations come up. It's the people that hold the power. Imagine how quickly things would change if everyone stopped using Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Threads, WhatsApp, Telegram, Snapchat, etc. overnight. From billions/millions to users, to zero. Can you imagine how quickly the companies would change/adjust/pivot/react?
Disagree. They know. It's just that they're trapped in an unethical business model that will never allow them to make it great. This is because the platform's interests are constantly at war with the user's interests. This was a critical mistake in the earlier days of the internet.
Google itself identified this in the early days in a paper that they wrote. They originally just wanted to organize the internet. But with an advertising revenue model, the interests of the advertisers was ultimately gonna be more important.
Call it "enshittification": Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die.
They don't care about making a great or even good product. It's solely about making as much money in as short a time period as possible, regardless of the long term consequences.
I don't have access to Twitter's balance sheet, but I'd wager a guess that they're on financial life support in the short term, and they've got a stage 4 cancer diagnosis in the long term.
The only thing Twitter has going for them over a competitor like Mastodon or Threads, is their name. And Musk has made sure their name is covered in shit and mud.
Twitter was doomed before Musk bought them, and they're super doomed now.
While it is true, there are also some factors which make people converge on some platforms. Factors beyond simply presence of other people. Like technical features.
The biggest technical feature that draws users is the Interface. Twitter didn’t gain popularity (or even the Bird icon and “tweet” moniker) until Tweetie, Twitteriffic and eventually Tweetbot came along.
Reddit was just a website for (no offence intended) “neckbearded basement dwelling incels” until RiF and Apollo made it more accessible.
Mastodon usage soared when 3rd Party Twitter apps were killed and once once again when Ivory was released.
I didn’t even know about Lemmy until I heard @christianselig@mastodon.social and @gruber@mastodon.social mentioned it on The Talk Show. I didn’t start using it regularly until I discovered wefwef and Memmy.
You're not wrong about there being multiple factors, but I'd argue that this is often the least important factor. The technical features are easily replicated. (See: threads, stories, reels/tiktoks/shorts, etc.)
Network effects, on the other hand, have a stranglehold like no other.
You're on Facebook because your family's on there. You're on Twitter because your favorite meme pages are on there. You're on Instagram because the photographer you really like is on there. So on and so forth.